Faculty
Sherrie
Flick is the author of the novel
Reconsidering Happiness and two short story collections, Whiskey, Etc. and Thank Your
Lucky Stars. A book of narrative nonfiction, which explores her
relationship to the Pittsburgh region and its influence on her feminism, is
forthcoming from In Fact Books, the book list of Creative Nonfiction magazine. Her nonfiction has appeared in
newspapers, journals, and anthologies, including The Wall Street Journal, Ploughshares,
Creative Nonfiction, Pittsburgh Magazine, and Fried Walleye and Cherry Pie: Midwestern
Writers on Food. She has received fellowships from Sewanee Writers’
Conference, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Ucross, and Atlantic Center for
the Arts. She is a senior lecturer in the Food Studies and MFA programs at
Chatham University and works as a freelance writer. http://sherrieflick.com/
Dave Housley is the author of the novel This Darkness Got to Give, and co-author with Becky Barnard on the upcoming sci-fi young adult novel The Greys. He has published four story collections:
Massive Cleansing Fire,
If I Knew the Way,
I Would Take You Home,
Commercial Fiction, and
Ryan Seacrest is Famous. His work has appeared in
Booth, Hobart, McSweeneys, Mid-American Review, Quarterly West, Wigleaf, and some other online and print magazines. He is one of the founding editors of
Barrelhouse and co-founder of the Conversations and Connections writer's conference, and the writer's retreat Writer Camp.
Keegan Lester is a writer living in New York City. Mary Ruefle selected his collection of poetry this shouldn’t be beautiful but it was and it was all i had so i drew it for the 2016 Slope Editions Book Prize. Keegan's writing appears in The Journal, The Boston Review, Brooklyn Vol.1, Hobart, Longform, Cutbank and The Academy of American Poets Poem a Day Series among others, and will be anthologized in the 2019 Edition of Bettering American Poetry. He earned his BA from West Virginia University and his MFA in Writing from Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts. He’s a touring member of the Travelin’ Appalachian Revue.
Jeff Mann grew up in Covington, Virginia, and Hinton, West
Virginia, receiving degrees in English and forestry from West Virginia
University. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in many
publications, including Arts and Letters, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah,
Willow Springs, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Crab Orchard Review, and
Appalachian Heritage. He has published three award-winning poetry
chapbooks, Bliss, Mountain Fireflies, and Flint Shards from Sussex;
five full-length books of poetry, Bones Washed with Wine, On the
Tongue, Ash: Poems from Norse Mythology, A Romantic Mann, and
Rebels; two collections of personal essays, Edge: Travels of an
Appalachian Leather Bear and Binding the God: Ursine Essays from the
Mountain South; three novellas, Devoured, included in Masters of
Midnight: Erotic Tales of the Vampire, Camp Allegheny, included in History’s
Passion: Stories of Sex Before Stonewall, and The Saga of Einar and
Gisli, included in On the Run: Tales of Gay Pursuit and Passion;
six novels, Cub, Country, Insatiable, Fog: A Novel of Desire and Reprisal
(which won the Pauline Réage Novel Award), Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil
War (which won a Rainbow Award), and Salvation: A Novel of the
Civil War (which won both the Pauline Réage Novel Award and a Lambda
Literary Award); a book of poetry and memoir, Loving Mountains, Loving Men;
and three volumes of short fiction, Desire and Devour: Stories of Blood and
Sweat, Consent: Bondage Tales, and A History of Barbed Wire
(which won a Lambda Literary Award). In 2013, he was inducted into the
Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Hall of Fame. He teaches creative
writing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. His website is jeffmannauthor.com
Renée K. Nicholson is Director of the 2019 West Virginia
Writers’ Workshop. Renée served as Assistant to the Director of the workshop
from 2007-2017, is the author of the poetry collection, Roundabout
Directions to Lincoln Center (Urban Farmhouse Press, 2014) and co-editor of
the anthology Bodies of Truth: Personal Narratives of Illness, Disability,
and Medicine (University of Nebraska Press, 2019). She was the 2011
Emerging Writer-in-Residence at Penn State-Altoona and was the 2018 recipient
of the Susan S. Landis Prize for Distinguished Service to the Arts by the West
Virginia Division of Culture and History. Her writing has been published in The Millions, Electric Literature, Poets
& Writers, Midwestern Gothic, Bellevue Literary Review, Moon City Review,
Superstition Review, The Gettysburg Review and elsewhere. Renée has been
the recipient of grants from The West Virginia Commission on the Arts, WVU
ADVANCE, WV CTSI, The Benedum Foundation, WVU Community Engagement Grants, and
the WVU Humanities Center. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle
and on the faculty of the programs for Multi- and Interdisciplinary Studies at
WVU.
Michele Young-Stone is the
author of three novels: Lost in the
Beehive, an O Magazine 2018 Book
Pick, Above Us Only Sky, and The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors,
which the Boston Globe called “an exceptionally rich and sure-handed debut.”
She is at work on a fourth novel. After teaching high school English for seven
years, Michele earned her MFA in fiction writing from Virginia Commonwealth
University. She lives in the Outer Banks of North Carolina with her husband and
son.
Natalie Sypolt lives and
writes in West Virginia. She received her MFA in fiction from
West Virginia University and currently teaches writing and literature. Her work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Kenyon Review Online, Willow
Springs Review, Appalachian Heritage and other literary journals. Natalie
serves as a literary editor for the Anthology of Appalachian Writers and
runs the high school portion of the West Virginia Writers Workshop. Her
first book, The Sound of Holding Your Breath, came out in November 2018
from West Virginia University Press.